“This afternoon I signed legislation that will, effective
today, replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of
release as the highest form of legal punishment in Connecticut. Although it is
an historic moment – Connecticut joins 16 other states and the rest of the
industrialized world by taking this action – it is a moment for sober
reflection, not celebration.

“Many of us who have advocated for this position over the
years have said there is a moral component to our opposition to the death
penalty. For me, that is certainly the case. But that does not mean – nor
should it mean – that we question the morality of those who favor capital
punishment. I certainly don’t. I know many people whom I deeply respect,
including friends and family, that
believes the death penalty is just. In fact, the issue knows no boundaries: not
political party, not gender, age, race, or any other demographic. It is, at
once, one of the most compelling and vexing issues of our time.

“My position on the appropriateness of the death penalty in
our criminal justice system evolved over a long period of time. As a young man,
I was a death penalty supporter. Then I spent years as a prosecutor and pursued
dangerous felons in court, including murderers. In the trenches of a criminal
courtroom, I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect.
While it’s a good system designed with the highest ideals of our democratic
society in mind, like most of human experience, it is subject to the
fallibility of those who participate in it. I saw people who were poorly served
by their counsel. I saw people wrongly accused or mistakenly identified. I saw
discrimination. In bearing witness to those things, I came to believe that
doing away with the death penalty was the only way to ensure it would not be
unfairly imposed."Another factor that led me to today is the ‘unworkability’
of Connecticut’s death penalty law. In the last 52 years, only 2 people have
been put to death in Connecticut – and both of them volunteered for it.
Instead, the people of this state pay for appeal after appeal, and then watch
time and again as defendants are marched in front of the cameras, giving them a
platform of public attention they don’t deserve. It is sordid attention that
rips open never-quite-healed wounds. The 11 men currently on death row in
Connecticut are far more likely to die of old age than they are to be put to
death.

“As in past years, the campaign to abolish the death penalty
in Connecticut has been led by dozens of family members of murder victims, and
some of them were present as I signed this legislation today. In the words of
one such survivor: ‘Now is the time to start the process of healing, a process
that could have been started decades earlier with the finality of a life
sentence. We cannot afford to put on hold the lives of these secondary victims.
We need to allow them to find a way as early as possible to begin to live
again.’ Perhaps that is the most compelling message of all.

“As our state moves beyond this divisive debate, I hope we
can all redouble our efforts and common work to improve the fairness and
integrity of our criminal justice system.